GDC: 10 Things You Did Not Know About PopCap and Bejeweled

Including the fact that the company's first foray into gaming was strip poker.

By Dana Jongewaard

One of the many retrospective talks at this year's GDC was given by PopCap cofounder Jason Kapalka, who was speaking about his experiences making Bejeweled. Some fun factoids from the talk:

PopCap was originally called SexyActionCool, after a tagline on a movie poster for Desperado. For years after the company changed name, employee paychecks still said SexyActionCool.

The company's first game was called Foxy Poker, a strip poker game. The intent was to sell the engine to porn companies and then make other games based off that. But then the whole thing felt icky, so they didn't continue on that path.

Bejeweled was inspired by a game called Colors Game and was originally called Diamond Mine. It was named after a Canadian rock song by band Blue Rodeo.

The name was changed when Microsoft licensed the game to put on MSN to avoid confusion with another game called Diamond Mines. The named Bejeweled was a play on a Brendan Fraser movie from that time, Bedazzled.

Microsoft has the rights to sell skinned versions of Bejeweled to advertisers, which is why there have been Tyson Chicken and Purina versions of Bejeweled.

Peggle was originally a Norse-mythology themed game called Thunderball.

Kapalka provided the voiceover for the first Bejeweled.

Development time for the very first game was one month.

Since the first game came out, 798,000 years have been spent playing Bejeweled. Yes, YEARS.

Kapalka's cat Snackers has a secret cameo in every single Bejeweled game, including Bejeweled Blitz, where she is the Cat's Eye gem.